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Linguistics'r'us
Mar. 1st, 2014 09:16 amThis spring, barring any of the family crises that put the kibosh on our big vacation last year, we're planning to go to Sicily for a couple weeks. Shoshanna's parents went there several times, and loved the place, and from everything we've read, it's easy to see why. We're very much looking forward to the trip, and particularly to spending some time hiking on Stromboli and Aetna, Europe's two active volcanoes*. Who knew Europe had volcanoes? (Well, we did, obviously. But although I know this logically, it just isn't part of my mental image of the Mediterranean.)
* For weeks now, the old Genesis song Dance on a Volcano has been running through my head. It's not one of their best, but it's part of "A Trick of the Tail", one of their strongest albums and one of my favorites, since I first heard it (and played it obsessively) as a teen while I was learning to love music.
To prepare for the trip, I'm trying to cram enough Italian into my brain that I'll be able to communicate basic concepts ("I will not buy this record, it is scratched"*). As usual, I've left it too long (too much work during the December to March period for me to have mental energy left over to learn a new language), but I'm hoping to achieve roughly grade 1 competency by the time we leave.
* A reference to one of my favorite Monty Python skits, in which one of their trademark somewhat malicious characters creates a fractured Hungarian-English traveler's dictionary, and much mayhem ensues. As a translator and frequent critic of French-to-English translation in Quebec, I'm a sucker for this kind of humor.
It's been a fascinating exercise. I already speak French with moderate fluency, and as a word geek, I know many of the Latinate roots of many English words. So there are many correspondences that make it easier to pick things up; verbs like "bere" (to drink) have a clear resemblance to French counterparts such as "boire", "quante" is enough like "quantity" for me to remember, "ancora" and "besogno" are enough like "encore" and "besoin" that they're instantly familiar, and of course "birra" is close enough to "beer" that I can get by in English should I forget the Italian. (As if!) This makes it much easier to recognize the words and tie them to hooks that are already firmly embedded in my brain -- you should pardon the pointed metaphor.
On the other hand, there are many things that trip me up. First and foremost, some things that look very much the same in French and Italian really aren't. For example, "que" in French is pronounced "kuh", but in Italian it becomes "kwey". And the verb conjugations are disorientingly different, although I'm starting to catch on to the patterns. I still think I'll be doing a lot of "to go Palermo I want" and "fish to eat we want" while I'm nailing down the details. Another problem is that I already know bits and snatches of Spanish, and that puts a slant on my pronunciation. I suspect that at least once during our trip, someone will ask me whether I'm Spanish.
Learning Italian is a fun exercise, and one I look forward to each time I dip into the book I'm using to learn. That's very unlike my previous efforts to learn Chinese and Japanese. That's not to say that I disliked Chinese and Japanese, which were fascinating and rich in different ways -- it's just that there are no cognates to help, and that meant I always approached my learning sessions with a certain fear or intimidation, which I discovered really interfered with learning. Next time I return to those languages, I'll need to find a way to approach them with more eagerness and less fear. It's also a reminder to me when wearing one of my other hats (technical communicator) that one of the first things we need to do, even before we figure out what we want to communicate, is to find ways to remove the intimidation factor.
A final note about learning resources: Being a bookish sort, I always start my learning with a book. I've found the "for dummies" and "for complete idiots" books to be pretty good, but ZOMG are they poorly edited. There are countless small errors that throw me off and make me doubt what I've learned, the pronunciation tips are inconsistent, key words defined in the text often don't make it into the small dictionary in the appendix, and on and on. It makes the learning unnecessarily difficult, and book publishers really need to get a clue about the value of editing. Yes, it's expensive, but you get your money's worth a hundredfold when it comes to the user experience. Since I now own an iPad, I've also downloaded a couple Italian tutoring programs, which I've dipped into and look forward to studying.
* For weeks now, the old Genesis song Dance on a Volcano has been running through my head. It's not one of their best, but it's part of "A Trick of the Tail", one of their strongest albums and one of my favorites, since I first heard it (and played it obsessively) as a teen while I was learning to love music.
To prepare for the trip, I'm trying to cram enough Italian into my brain that I'll be able to communicate basic concepts ("I will not buy this record, it is scratched"*). As usual, I've left it too long (too much work during the December to March period for me to have mental energy left over to learn a new language), but I'm hoping to achieve roughly grade 1 competency by the time we leave.
* A reference to one of my favorite Monty Python skits, in which one of their trademark somewhat malicious characters creates a fractured Hungarian-English traveler's dictionary, and much mayhem ensues. As a translator and frequent critic of French-to-English translation in Quebec, I'm a sucker for this kind of humor.
It's been a fascinating exercise. I already speak French with moderate fluency, and as a word geek, I know many of the Latinate roots of many English words. So there are many correspondences that make it easier to pick things up; verbs like "bere" (to drink) have a clear resemblance to French counterparts such as "boire", "quante" is enough like "quantity" for me to remember, "ancora" and "besogno" are enough like "encore" and "besoin" that they're instantly familiar, and of course "birra" is close enough to "beer" that I can get by in English should I forget the Italian. (As if!) This makes it much easier to recognize the words and tie them to hooks that are already firmly embedded in my brain -- you should pardon the pointed metaphor.
On the other hand, there are many things that trip me up. First and foremost, some things that look very much the same in French and Italian really aren't. For example, "que" in French is pronounced "kuh", but in Italian it becomes "kwey". And the verb conjugations are disorientingly different, although I'm starting to catch on to the patterns. I still think I'll be doing a lot of "to go Palermo I want" and "fish to eat we want" while I'm nailing down the details. Another problem is that I already know bits and snatches of Spanish, and that puts a slant on my pronunciation. I suspect that at least once during our trip, someone will ask me whether I'm Spanish.
Learning Italian is a fun exercise, and one I look forward to each time I dip into the book I'm using to learn. That's very unlike my previous efforts to learn Chinese and Japanese. That's not to say that I disliked Chinese and Japanese, which were fascinating and rich in different ways -- it's just that there are no cognates to help, and that meant I always approached my learning sessions with a certain fear or intimidation, which I discovered really interfered with learning. Next time I return to those languages, I'll need to find a way to approach them with more eagerness and less fear. It's also a reminder to me when wearing one of my other hats (technical communicator) that one of the first things we need to do, even before we figure out what we want to communicate, is to find ways to remove the intimidation factor.
A final note about learning resources: Being a bookish sort, I always start my learning with a book. I've found the "for dummies" and "for complete idiots" books to be pretty good, but ZOMG are they poorly edited. There are countless small errors that throw me off and make me doubt what I've learned, the pronunciation tips are inconsistent, key words defined in the text often don't make it into the small dictionary in the appendix, and on and on. It makes the learning unnecessarily difficult, and book publishers really need to get a clue about the value of editing. Yes, it's expensive, but you get your money's worth a hundredfold when it comes to the user experience. Since I now own an iPad, I've also downloaded a couple Italian tutoring programs, which I've dipped into and look forward to studying.